How Much.....With a Difference.

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Tia

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If your horse was sick and you had already used up all of your insurance money, how much exactly would YOU be prepared to spend on the horse to make it better, based on the prognosis being more than a 50% recovery if this treatment could be paid for?

£5,000, £10,000, £20,000, £50,000 etc??
 
would depend what the horse was worth, and if it was a happy hacker or an event horse
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. I know, i'm a harsh cow
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For current ponio, I wouldnt go over the insurance.
 
Ummmmmmmmm...

well my mare isn't insured. It would totally depend on the problem she had as to what I would spend on her.

In reality I doubt very much it would be much over £1000...
 
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Ummmmmmmmm...

well my mare isn't insured. It would totally depend on the problem she had as to what I would spend on her.

In reality I doubt very much it would be much over £1000...

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LMAO. there's you spending 1k on your big mare and me spending 5k on a sh*tland (well, not me, the insurance)
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TBH i don't know why we insure him, apart from the fact we have pikeys breaking into the yard every few weeks
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You see it's actually very easy for me because I live 4 hours drive from the equine hospital, therefore it would be very difficult to move the horse to this facility if it was in such a bad way, therefore I would have to deal with the situation on-site, hence no bill at home could possibly be more than 1 or 2 thousand absolute tops.

My options are cheap easy-stuff fix-its or put to sleep for serious stuff. My biggest bill here (with the cowboy vets) was when the stallion broke his neck and it cost me just over a thousand and they weren't even able to diagnose the stallion's condition. My vet who attended after them, charged me under 2 hundred for 6 months worth of treatment for me to do myself at home. There was no way I was prepared to send him to the equine hospital at an estimated cost of around 40,000; there's no way I would even have transported him there, regardless of whether I was prepared to pay that amount.
 
Gosh these questions are really getting my head in a confused mess! Probably a limit of £10,000, because I could justify that by saying I wouldn't go on holiday etc for so many years (a waste of money imo). I'm not even sure it would come down to money for me. If they said Chex had to be boxrested for 6 months or a year then I don't think I could do that too him, when he's not got many years left and he'd hate to spend that long stuck in a stable
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. Same goes for complex surgery with a painful recovery - whats the point in spending months in pain when you only have a few years left!
 
My vet refers to Newmarket, which is a trek and a half in a lorry! I'm pretty sure ponio would die of terror if I took him there in a lorry!

It's a posh hospital, lovely and spanking new (ish). You arrive and they ask you for your horses chosen diet, and provide whatever you ask for (as I'm sure all vet hospitals do). But when you get the bill you don't half wish you'd chosen the value range of horse feeds
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I should add - Chex is purely a pet to me, he doesn't have a purpose. If I can ride then its a bonus, but its not the be all and end all for me. I think that influences how I think of him.
 
As much as I could while still paying bills and feeding my family.
Sounds hard but it is just a horse...mind you if the outlook is bleak I would probably PTS sooner rather then later anyway.
 
I don't have mine insured, I've had my horse for 9 years now and I think I've been lucky as apart from a few bills for anti bi's and obviously jabs etc the only biggish bill I've had was earlier this year when he had an infection in a tooth and had to have xrays done.
I've always thought down the lines of, if i can't afford the treatment maybe that means that it shouldn't be carried out and it would be in his interests to be pts.
I can't put an actual figure on what I would be prepared to spend as it would depend on the particular reason and the outlook in the long term.
 
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Gosh these questions are really getting my head in a confused mess! Probably a limit of £10,000, because I could justify that by saying I wouldn't go on holiday etc for so many years (a waste of money imo). I'm not even sure it would come down to money for me. If they said Chex had to be boxrested for 6 months or a year then I don't think I could do that too him, when he's not got many years left and he'd hate to spend that long stuck in a stable
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. Same goes for complex surgery with a painful recovery - whats the point in spending months in pain when you only have a few years left!

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My horse was 15 when he went through colic surgery and was put on box rest for 2 months, limited turnout for 2 months (by that i mean like a stable really but outside) and then had normal turnout gradually introduced for 4 weeks then i could ride him again which is what i am doing do you think this was wrong of me to put him through this surgery?
 
I spent an extra 7k on my pony who had laminitis. The insurance paid 5k and I carried on. This was made up of heart bars every ten days with the farrier having the vet on hand, cushings medication, founderguard, x-rays, hospital stays. It soon mounts up because i spent that in little over 6 months. Unfortunately we lost the battle and she was pts August 2006.
 
I understand everyones veiws but if you given a good chance that the horse would get better wouldnt you all want to do that for the health of your current horse! IMHO i will never be able to replace sid he is very precious to me!
 
Horsebetty - I think it much depends on the horse in question - some horses just cannot tolerate box rest at all, whilst others cope just fine. It has to be what is right for the individual horse. Just because one owner says that box rest is not right for her horse, doesn't mean she is criticising the decision you made for yours!
 
In the case of Herbie I would be prepared to go some way over the insurance for vets fees of £5k (possibly another £5k)if it would leave a fully sound fit horse afterwards or a good chance of one.

For Hannah I would have to consider this much more seriously if it went over the £5k limit.
 
my horse only cost £500 as i kinda rescued her and is insured but once that money had gone i dont think i could afford to pay much more. and she is a happy hacker.
 
Good question - I have £5k insurance but wouldn't be prepared on my current horse to go over £1k on top of that much as I love him, he has had too many problems already so I feel pts would be kinder in that option. Yes I know I am cruel and heartless.
 
If my insurance money had been used up (which comes to about £5000...more than my horse is insured for) then i'd have thought that 90% of my options had been used up.

I'd probably stump up £1-2K if a) I could afford it and b) it was likely to help.

If not, its a heartbreaking thought but he'd probably be PTS if it was a condition which would keep him in pain.
 
I have always thought I'd hate to put a horse through colic surgery, if the vet/surgeons could guarantee me that they can cope with the pain and have plenty of pain killers and fantastic after care, then I may be persuaded. If it was my horse of a lifetime, I reckon I'd do it.

Quite rightly, as someone said, above, it depends on the horse, if its knocking on a bit and has perhaps a little stiffness in the joints already, then best end it there and then.

Money out of my pocket, for a good horse, I'd probably go up to 2.5k
 
I'd look at the prognosis more than the cost - but I'd guess that a horse needing more than 5k of vet treatment has an extremely poor chance of recovery anyway. Simple things like box rest at home don't cost that much.

I don't bother to insure and didn't treat my horse after diagnosis (for lameness) - but getting there took months and cost about 1k - surgery, with a poor prognosis for soundness anyway, would have been at least another 1.5 k - it wasn't the cost that stopped me going for it but the poor chance that he could ever return to full work afterwards.
 
I have my boy insured,so that helps,when the limit came up we would stretch to whatever it cost if he had a great chance of recovery!I know it is mad but have had him from being a baby and he is a huge part of our family,everything he has done for me i would owe it to him!!!
 
I would spend up to £10,000 - £15,000 on Chancer if I had to - he is insured for £5,000 vet's bills. He is special, but if he were that ill/injured, then yes I could have him pts.

Cairo is different, he is truely special and my husband is far more emotional about his horse than I am with mine. For Cairo, if there was a good chance of recovery and he had a pain free life, we would pay whatever we could afford, and yes we could raise £30,000 or more.

At the moment we pay about £3,000 every three years for his recurring cancer.

He is not worth any money at all to anyone, but to my husband, he is everything. That old horse can make him relax and smile after the most terrible day at work - he has a hugely stressful job and for us, this is what counts.

After all, £1,000 a year is fairly cheap compared to having to see a stress counsellor to avoid my OH having a breakdown
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